


Trance

by LittleLinor



Category: Cardfight!! Vanguard
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Child Abuse, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:53:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23811130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleLinor/pseuds/LittleLinor
Summary: Kazumi's little brother is being kept locked away.
Relationships: Onimaru Kazumi & Shouji Kazuma
Comments: 16
Kudos: 12





	Trance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [UselessLilium (o0whitelily0o)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/o0whitelily0o/gifts).



> Written for the Mystery AU Meme! This was Not supposed to be 12k >_>
> 
> The referenced non-con tag isn't about rape, but you know, sexual violence isn't the only kind of intimate violence. I thought it was best to warn for it anyway.
> 
> Other than that, warning for canon levels of psychological abuse made maybe a little more explicit. If you think I've missed something that needs to be tagged, please tell me!
> 
> With that out of the way, please enjoy the story <3

“Would it really be that bad if I fed him just once?” Kazumi asks the cook, the only person in the staff whose sympathy for him overpowers her obedience for his father. “I can be careful… I’d hold him properly…”  
She shakes her head, face unusually grim.  
“I’m sorry, young master. I don’t think there’s any way to go around the rules, in this case. It’s not that I don’t think you’d be careful,” she adds more gently as he sighs and looks down. “You’re always very careful. But that child is…” She pauses. Frowns, for long enough that Kazumi starts thinking that maybe she won’t finish her sentence at all. “… fragile,” she finishes, and it doesn’t make _sense_ , because he’d be careful, right? He can bottle feed a baby if they show him how. Kazuma isn’t even that small and fragile anymore!  
But even asking has used up his energy for the day, and already he feels guilty for thinking of disobeying or negotiating, so he nods, numbly, and goes back to watching, until someone comes into the kitchen and coldly announces that his tutor is waiting for him.

It takes him a few years to understand that no one wants his little brother there, but he doesn’t know _why_ they kept him, if that’s the case. His father hasn’t exactly been afraid to throw out people before.  
Not since Kazuma was born, though. The staff hasn’t changed much since.  
Kazumi wants him there. He’s always felt so lonely, and learning that he was going to have a little brother had brought such joy even to his tiny, still stumbling heart. And since Kazuma’s mother didn’t make it, he’s always wanted to save _him_ that loneliness too. His own mother has never taken much care of him, and that was painful enough; he can’t imagine what it’s like when you have none at all.  
But Kazuma is being kept away, in a different part of the house, and although they’ve seen each other a few times, they’ve never had any chance to play.  
It’s not just that their father would disapprove. As much as he hates it, Kazumi has learned to go behind people’s backs, when it matters. But approaching that part of the building is almost impossible, even through the garden, even at night.  
Somehow, Kazuma is being kept under very careful guard.

He’s eight when he actually gets his chance, for the first time. With the rainy season, several people are stuck in their beds, too sick for even his father’s wrath to be an effective threat. The staff is stretched thin, and the rainy outside is unguarded, and Kazumi knows the house and gardens very, very well.  
Kazuma, when Kazumi pokes his head around the corner from under the deck, is sitting outside, his legs dangling off the deck, looking at the rain sadly, apparently as unconcerned about getting sick as Kazumi himself.  
His head turns. His eyes home in on Kazumi’s own like he’s always known he was there, and for a second Kazumi’s breath escapes him, as if those eyes were keeping him prisoner.  
And then Kazuma looks away, and down, and suddenly he looks much younger, actually six, or even younger than that, his face mournful, his lips pulled into what could have passed for a pout if it didn’t feel so _sad_.  
“You’re not supposed to be here…” he says, quietly.  
Immediately, years of habit come back, and Kazumi flinches back.  
“Sorry—is it bad? Should I leave? Do you want me to leave?”  
Kazuma shakes his head.  
“It’s okay…”  
He doesn’t really move, not quite like a deer in the headlights, but more like a prey that’s accepted its fate. And yet, although he’s nervous, he doesn’t seem actually scared.  
It feels like he’s almost beyond fear.  
Suddenly feeling a lot more shy himself, Kazumi pulls himself up onto the deck and quietly moves to his side, throwing a nervous glance inside to check that no one else is there.  
“I wanted to talk to you,” he says, sitting next to him. “They never let us talk to each other…”  
Kazuma nods.  
“They’re scared.”  
“Scared?”  
“Scared I’ll hurt you.”  
“… that’s silly. You’re my little brother. Why would you hurt me?”  
Kazuma blinks. He stares up, mouth barely open, at Kazumi’s face, and it’s the most expression Kazumi’s ever seen on him.  
“… little brother?” he asks, very quiet.  
“I…” His head spins. “You knew right? I’m sure Father mentioned it when you were around before…”  
“They told me… I just…” He stops, hesitates. It makes him look alive. “… is it okay? Do you really… do you really see me as your little brother?”  
Kazumi beams.  
“Of course! You can call me Big Brother if you want.”  
For the first time, a small shy smile spreads on Kazuma’s face. It’s the most adorable thing Kazumi has ever seen.  
Why, oh, why did they never let him take care of him before? He’s already missed _so much_. It’s unfair.  
And Kazuma thought he wouldn’t want to talk to him. That he wouldn’t want him as his little brother?  
It hurts to think about, like tiny tangled knots in his stomach.  
Well. Better late than never. The least he can do is try to make him smile more.  
“… do you want to play?”  
“… play? Play what?”  
Kazumi looks inside. There are no toys that he can see, the room painfully bare save for the bare necessities and some books that look like schoolwork. And outside… well, even if it wasn’t raining, the risk of being seen and caught is probably too high.  
But there is one thing, at least, that he carries with him all the time. One thing that gives him courage when things get too much.  
“… I’ll show you something secret. You won’t tell, right?”  
Kazuma nods.

“It’s… a dragon?”  
Kazuma turns the card over in his hands, fascinated.  
“His name is Shiranui,” Kazumi explains. If his studies have been as early and thorough as his own, then he can definitely read, but he wouldn’t want to call attention to it if he couldn’t. “He’s a _ninja_ and he protects his clan… he’s really powerful.” He hands him another card. “This one is one of his subordinates.”  
Kazuma takes the card, silent. His eyes are wide, so wide, like he’s never seen anything so wondrous in his life. Kazumi watches, and his breath is short, his shoulders taunt; he doesn’t even know whether it’s excitement, or reverence.  
There’s something magic in seeing this little boy light up.  
“I…” he starts, and almost winces when Kazuma turns to him, the spell broken. “I can show you how to play, if you’d like?”  
Kazuma’s head tilts a little to the side, still slow and almost detached, but the spark of interest hasn’t gone.  
“Play?”  
“The cards! They’re not just for collecting; you can play with them. See on the back, how it says Vanguard? That’s the name of the game.” He smiles, putting all the reassuring energy he can find into it, trying to summon into existence the reliable big brother he’s always wanted to be. “I only have one deck, so it might be a little weird, but… I can show you how it works, at least.”  
Kazuma smiles, and Kazumi knows that no matter the risks, it was worth coming here.

It only takes a few minutes of it for Kazumi to forget about everyone else completely. At first, he wonders, why no one seems to be paying attention to Kazuma, why he’s alone in this room, but he quickly pushes it out of his mind: _he_ is only here because people have been so busy, after all.  
And Kazuma takes to the game naturally, like someone whose instincts have already been honed by years of experience. It’s a little shocking, a little fascinating, how his little brows furrow and then he plays the card that demands the most resources of Kazumi, despite not even knowing all the rules yet. It’s a little humbling, but Kazumi doesn’t mind: Kazuma is so small and so sad, if something can make him feel a little confident, then why would he feel bad about it?  
And then, as they’re approaching the ends of their half-decks, their damage still lagging behind, Kazuma seems to falter, to become absent. In little lapses, but after a few of them, Kazumi can’t help but frown.  
“… are you okay?”  
“… I’m hungry.”  
He says it so quietly that Kazumi almost doesn’t hear.  
“Already?” he says without thinking. Kazuma looks away and seems to curl in on himself, to become even smaller. “I—I mean, it’s fine! You’re a growing boy, there’s nothing to be a—”  
“They forgot to feed me,” comes the quiet, quiet response.  
Kazumi freezes.  
“They usually come… late in the morning… but they forgot.” He pulls his legs to his chest, tucking his chin between his knees, his sad eyes barely showing above them. “Maybe they just… won’t do it anymore.”  
Kazumi’s heart clenches.  
“I…” He swallows, starts thinking logistics. Surely if he goes to the kitchen, they won’t ask too many questions as long as he’s quiet… “I’ll feed you.”  
“No!”  
Kazuma flinches, scrambles back as if Kazumi was about to explode.  
“Huh?”  
“You can’t! I…”  
He trails off, ready to cry. Kazumi stares at him, lost and worried.  
Slowly, as he stares at Kazumi’s face, Kazuma’s expression changes. Relief, but also sadness. Fatalism, almost.  
“… it’s okay,” he says, quietly. “It’s too risky anyway. I can wait.”  
“But…” Kazumi starts, but his heart jumps as footsteps echo outside.  
Faster than him, Kazuma gasps, and shoves the cards under nearby furniture.  
“What are you being so noisy about?” an unkind voice asks as the sliding door opens. It’s one of the maids, one he’s sure normally works directly for his father.  
She catches sight of him, and her expression flashes from stressed annoyance to panic.  
“ _No_ ,” she gasps out. In the blink of an eye, she’s dashed forward, pushed Kazuma further back, and grabbed Kazumi by the arm, pulling him up and looking him all over. “ _Why are you here_? Did he bite you? Shit, they’re going to _kill_ me!”  
“B-bite?” He looks back to Kazuma, who’s stayed on the floor where he was pushed, not even really trying to push himself back up. His eyes have gone empty again, like a switch was flicked, and Kazumi wants to cry.  
“Oh for all the—Yamada!” she calls.  
More footsteps, and a man appears at the door, winded, and, as he takes in the scene, equally concerned.  
“Keep an eye on him,” she tells him in a loud whisper. “I’ll take care of this one. Not a word to anyone, we’ll be in a _lot_ of trouble if word of this reaches the masters.”  
The man nods. Without another word, she drags Kazumi out.

To his relief, she only brings him to his room. But it’s in the other room that his heart and thoughts remain, to the little boy who didn’t bother protecting himself, the little boy they treated like a _thing_ rather than a human.  
Before he can gather his indignation and ask them _what_ they are doing, she’s closed the door and kneeled in front of him, taking first his hands and checking his wrists, his forearms, then tilting his head in a brisk manner, so unlike the almost-reverence with which most of the staff usually treats him, checking his neck from every angle.  
“Wh-what are you doing?”  
“Did he hurt you?”  
“No?! Why would he hurt me? He’s nice!”  
She rolls her eyes and sighs, and seems to deflate, her intense, scared, angry focus dropping.  
“… listen, Master Kazumi,” she says, picking back the honorifics as if she had suddenly remembered who she was talking to, “that child is dangerous. You’re lucky he didn’t harm you.”  
“But he’s not!” He shakes his shoulders a little, shrugging the uncomfortable feeling of bring grabbed from them, and tries to make himself sound like they’ve been trying to teach him. Confident. Authoritative. “Why are you keeping him locked up like that? He’s just a little boy.” And then enough indignation fills him that he can feed it into his voice too. “He told me you just _forgot to feed him_! Who forgets that?!”  
She pales.  
“He was so hungry he kept feeling dizzy,” he insists.  
“ _All the more reason not to get close_ ,” she hisses, suddenly almost vicious again.  
Kazumi stares. There’s disgust on her face, and anger, but even deeper, he can still see _fear_. Something more primal and deep-seated than the fear of being punished by his father.  
“… are you really not going to listen to reason?” she asks, staring him down.  
He steels himself. Normally, he hates this, hates the confrontation, hates how much they’re trying to force him into this mold one second and then ask him to obey the next, but for his little brother, he finds, he can call on strength he never before knew he had.  
Maybe it’s just the strength of finding a purpose.  
“… no,” he says, firm. “Not until you tell me everything.”  
She sighs.  
“… then stay here a few minutes, and don’t talk to anyone about this. I’ll go check on Yamada and come back—and give him his precious _food_ , if you’re so hung up about it.”  
She says “food” like she means “poison,” almost shuddering with it. Kazumi doesn’t hate easily, especially people who share a life under the whims of his father, but he could almost start to hate her.  
“… all right. I will wait.”

“Listen,” she tells him once she’s come back and double checked that no one was in the corridor or the next rooms. “That child isn’t human. He’s dangerous.”  
“… not human?”  
“He’s a vampire. A monster that drinks human blood. He could have attacked you and fed on your blood. Or worse, turned you into one too.”  
He stares. The silent little boy who’d been so excited at the sight of a card. A vampire?  
“But… how is that even possible?”  
“His mother was attacked while she was pregnant. You’re probably too young to remember.”  
He doesn’t remember, not really, but he remembers when the electric atmosphere of the house turned into a more hushed one, when he went from feeling too nervous to walk around and talk to people to feeling too loud, too big.  
And then Kazuma was born, and she died, and they told him that he had a little brother, and he never really got to see him, not from up close, even though he’d wanted to hold him so badly, even if he was too small himself.  
“… I remember a little.”  
“Now do you see why you need to stay away?”  
“… but he didn’t do anything. He didn’t attack me! He was so hungry he was starting to faint, and he still didn’t…”  
Memory hits him and he freezes.  
_You can’t!_  
“I… he…”  
He’d offered to feed him. And Kazuma had been _terrified._  
Until he understood from Kazumi’s confusion that he didn’t know the truth.  
“… he won’t hurt me,” he says, feeling more confident and even a little angry, because what do they _know_? “I know it.  
“He’s bitten people before.”  
That stops him in his tracks.  
“Really?” And then suspicion takes over. “… _when_?”  
“… a few years ago.”  
“That’s not very precise.”  
She sighs, angry.  
“Five years ago.”  
“… so he was a _baby_?”  
“Being a baby doesn’t make one of them any less dangerous.”  
“But he didn’t—he didn’t do that on purpose! How can you blame him for something he did as a _baby_?” He shakes his head. “I’m not going to treat him like a monster for something he didn’t have any control over!”  
Her eyes harden.  
“You’re not thinking of going back, are you?”  
“And what if I do?”  
“Keeping him in this house is how the Master guarantees _your_ safety. Don’t _waste_ that chance.”  
“Huh?”  
“… nevermind. I’ve said too much.”  
None of it makes any _sense_. But if she won’t tell him the full truth, if no one has thought to tell him the truth in six years, then he’s going to take matters into his own hands.  
“… I won’t tell my father about this,” he says. “But I want to see him again. I need to make sure he’s not being starved again. Or mistreated.”  
Once more, her eyes narrow.  
“Are you _threatening_ me?”  
“No. I’m making you a promise. But it has conditions.”  
She clicks her tongue, angry and frustrated.  
“… you’re your father’s son, all right,” she mutters, and somehow that hurts to hear most of all. “Fine. I’ll work something out. But do _not_ sneak out on your own. You were lucky today. You won’t be lucky again.”  
“… fine.”  
“And remember your promise.”  
“I will.”  
Truth be told, he really desn’t want to talk to his father either.

A week later, his tutor clears his throat after a long math lesson.  
“Master Kazumi, shall we take a walk? I believe the fresh air will be good for your brain. You seem inattentive.”  
At first, it hurts to hear. He’d been trying his _best_! And this is clearly far beyond the level normally expected of boys his age. But as he looks up, he pauses. The man’s face is perfectly composed, but he still looks tense.  
_Oh_ , he thinks. _Oh… maybe…_  
“… I’m sorry,” he says. “I had things on my mind. Maybe it’s a good idea.”

Kazuma, when they get to his room, looks scared, like he expects Kazumi to hit him. Reluctantly, Kazumi decides not to hug him after all.  
“I’m sorry about last time,” he says. “They shouldn’t have pushed you like that.”  
Kazuma looks away.  
“No, no… I’m the one who was noisy, so…”  
“That’s not…” He stops, and breathes. Obviously, his little brother isn’t used to others apologising to him. Well, he’ll have to change that. Even if it takes time. “Well, what’s done is done. But I’m here now. I can’t stay _too_ long, but we can play and talk a little?”  
“… you still want to play?”  
“Of course!”  
“… they told me you wanted to see me, but I didn’t know why… I thought…”  
He trails off, sad and uncertain. Swallowing his own nervousness, Kazumi reaches for his hand, very slowly, very carefully. To his relief, Kazuma lets him, although the fear on his face hurts. How is this boy who doesn’t seem scared of people who hit him or even his father scared of _him_?  
He puts on his best, most reassuring smile.  
“I wanted to see you… because I’m your big brother. And big brothers watch out for their little siblings.”  
Kazuma’s hand tightens. His eyes shimmer, wet, but instead of crying, he turns away, and Kazumi almost thinks he’s being dismissed until Kazuma reaches under the nearby cabinet and looks left and right before pulling out something.  
“I… I’m sure I got all of them…”  
He hands Kazumi his deck, Shiranui sitting neatly on top.  
“Oh… Oh, thank you…”  
It’s his turn to get misty eyed. In all honesty, he’d thought the cards lost. And although he could technically have bought new ones, the kind of attachment he’d formed with his wasn’t easily replaced.  
That Kazuma had understood how precious they were to him and kept them safe honestly makes him feel more cared for than he has in his life.  
“Thank you… they’re very important to me.”  
Kazuma smiles.  
“He’s your friend, right?”  
Despite his best efforts, Kazumi feels his cheeks heat up.  
“I—maybe? I’d like to think so but—he’s so _cool_ you know?”  
Kazuma smiles wider. It almost feels like a laugh.  
“… do you want to play again?” Kazumi asks, a little flustered. “We might have to stop it at five damage, though, with half-decks…”  
“Yes!”

Kazuma’s usual maid—or she might have been called governess in other circumstances, really—is much nicer than the one who found them out, Kazumi discovers over the next few weeks. He only really gets to visit once a week, twice if he’s lucky, but already those visits give him something to look forward to, a small breath of life in the stiffling mansion. Every time he goes, she’s the one who lets him in, quietly, and her smile as she does isn’t _purely_ one of relief; when she announces him, it’s with kindness in her voice.  
“He smiles a lot when you visit,” she quietly says one day as he leaves, and that simple sentence builds a fireplace in Kazumi’s heart.  
He has energy like never before. When he wakes up in the morning, it doesn’t take willpower to get up.  
The next chance he gets to go out and use his pocket money, he buys Kazuma a deck of his own. He hesitates with Dark Irregulars for a while, but then decides that calling attention to his nature might be more painful than supportive, no matter how much he means it as a gesture of acceptance.  
So instead, he picks a mage. A powerful mage who can transform himself.  
Hopefully, his power and determination can be a good example, give Kazuma a goal to strive for. And the Shadow Paladin playstyle is a good fit for his little brother’s surprisingly bold moves.

“Luard?”  
“He’s an elf who can turn into a dragon! And a scientist. I thought that was cool…” In the small room, with Kazuma actually handling the cards, he suddenly feels more shy about his choice. “… I’m sorry you couldn’t pick it out yourself… I thought the deck would fit you well… but I can get a different one if you don’t like—”  
“I like it.”  
It’s quiet, but when he looks up, Kazuma is holding the cards very tight.  
“… I like it… it’s a present from you… I don’t want to change it.” He holds the deck to his chest, and smiles. “I want to play it!”  
Kazumi smiles back.

“… big bro?” he asks, later in the afternoon, as the air starts to turn golden.  
Kazumi stacks his sorted cards back into their deck.  
“Yes?”  
“Aren’t you… you never look scared of me.”  
“Why would I be scared of you?”  
“But I’m—you _know_ what I am, right?”  
“Yes.”  
He looks up, and Kazuma’s eyes are on his, and he can’t breathe.  
He can’t look away.  
“Why?” Kazuma asks. “Why aren’t you scared?”  
“Because you’re my little brother,” Kazumi answers without thinking. “And I know you’re a good boy and you wouldn’t hurt anyone.”  
Kazuma’s eyes dampen, and he looks away. Blinking, Kazumi inches closer.  
“When I first came here… you never tried to do anything to me. You were just curious, and then you were happy just to talk… it’s… I just know. It’s not about what you are… it’s about _who_ you are. You’re not the kind of person who’d try to hurt others.” He reaches for Kazuma’s head, and carefully ruffles his hair. It’s fluffy, so shockingly soft for a boy that everyone treats like a bared knife. “I don’t care if you’re human or not. You’re still a little boy. A _good_ little boy.”  
“B-big bro…”  
And for what may have been the first time of both their lives, Kazumi finds himself held in a tight, desperate hug, Kazuma’s arms around his neck and his face pressed into his shoulder.  
He gasps, the air knocked out of him for a second. And then, a little breathless, he brings his own arms around Kazuma’s back.  
“Thank you,” Kazuma whispers.”

It’s only later, after he’s been led back to his room, that Kazumi thinks to be grateful that neither of the adults waiting outside walked in at that precise moment.

As weeks turn to months, the routine becomes a little more relaxed, a little less fraught with stress. Kazumi always comes in the afternoon, when Kazuma is apparently at his best and their father tends to be out, reducing the risk of him disturbing the house’s normal routine with his whims.  
Kazumi knows, when he looks at the adults he almost-inadvertently drew into his little scheme (to be fair, he hadn’t expected that many of them to get involved), that most of them still view his brother as a monster. Even most of those who take care of him keep their distance, and don’t mention him by name, and the way they look at him is cold, the way they would look not even at someone they hate, but at a distasteful piece of furniture in their way. There are only two, maybe three people that Kazumi would maybe trust with him for five minutes.  
But since he’s started coming, that look has started to change, if just a little. As if, seeing him actually smile and act like a child and not a caged animal, they were forced to see him as a person, almost.  
It’s still far, far less than he deserves, but it’s something.  
They play. They talk. They read. Kazuma has a sharp mind, and he’s barely behind the academic results Kazumi had at his age, despite the much better attention Kazumi has always been getting. If he could come more often, he would have loved to help him work himself.  
In Vanguard too, Kazuma makes fast progress. He’s always had a good instinct for it, but with Luard in hand, he excells, playing ruthlessly and efficiently. It’s such a contrast to his sweet personality that it leaves Kazumi shaken, sometimes.  
He wins more than he loses, and looks surprised every time, as if it wasn’t a regular thing. From someone else, Kazumi might have bristled a little (just a little, he isn’t _that_ petty) at what would probably be false modesty, but the pure joy in Kazuma, the way he clearly takes pride in that victory only because he looks _up_ to Kazumi so much (to him! Of all people!), makes him incapable of resenting him.  
“I’ll have to get stronger too so you don’t leave me behind,” he says with a laugh as he cleans up his cards after a game. “As big brother, I can’t set a bad example by letting myself go.”  
“You _are_ very strong,” Kazuma answers. “I know it.”  
“Oh? How do you know that?” he teases, and immediately kicks himself mentally. There’s nothing tactful about calling attention to the fact that Kazuma has no other partners.  
“I just do?” Kazuma answers, tilting his head a little.  
Instead of asking further, Kazumi smiles, and ruffles his hair.

Months turn to years. Kazuma grows up, cooped up in his lonely room. Kazumi longs to see him playing in the sunlight, and mourns the image, quietly, over time. If he can ever get his brother to enjoy the outside world with him, it will be the splatter of rain. The muted light of a grey, cloudy day. The softness of the night. It would be enough, he tells himself. Anything would be better than these four walls.  
For now, he treasures the very rare days when they can sit outside and watch the rain together, and prays for a better future.  
When he’s twelve, his father informs him that he’ll no longer be homeschooled. A very reputable academy has accepted his application (Kazumi, of course, had never knowingly submitted anything) and will be in charge of his education from now on.  
For just a second, Kazumi is scared that he has been found out, that this is a way to keep him away from Kazuma. But he quickly shakes some sense back into himself. His father may be good at being subtle with outsiders, but he’s never wasted his energy doing it at home. If Kazumi had brought on his displeasure, he would know it, very vividly.  
He bows, and accepts that things will be harder from now on, and goes back to his room racking his brain for ways to get around this.

“Young Master…” his tutor tells him once he brings it up, “It saddens me to say this, but… maybe this is for the best.”  
Kazumi stares. Had this man not been an ally, for all these years? But now, as Kazumi looks at him, something has changed, subtly. Slight discomfort that had not been there for a long time. And something a little harder in his voice, in his eyes.  
“… I beg your pardon?”  
“Young Master,” he says again, and Kazumi suddenly feels that he’s being talked down to, _now_ of all times, when he’s actually growing up, and asked to take on more responsibilities, “your brother may have been mostly harmless as a child… but he is growing up. I understand your attachment, but this situation cannot go on forever.” He sighs. “No matter how cute he may be, he isn’t a harmless pet you can keep playing with forever with no consequences.”  
Kazumi almost shakes.  
“My _brother_ ,” he says in his sternest voice, “is not and has never been a _pet_. He is my _family_ , and I will continue to take care of my family.”  
The man seems taken aback. It’s not often that Kazumi actually confronts anyone—in fact, he may never have done it with him at all in all the years he’s taught him. But this is the one thing for which he is ready to fight with everything he has.  
After a few moments of shock, he sighs.  
“Very well. However, you are aware that I won’t be able to help you anymore once the school year starts, aren’t you?”  
“I am. I’ll figure something out, with or without help. For now, I just ask that you help me communicate so I can set things up without being caught.”  
What he doesn’t say hangs in the air. If he does get caught, he might not be the only one to be.  
“… I’ll do what I can.”  
He will be gone soon, and will probably be glad to be. Kazumi doesn’t blame him.

“It’s okay,” Kazuma tells him sadly when he explains why he might have to visit less often from now on. “Maybe it’s just for—”  
“It’s _not_ for the best,” Kazumi hisses, indignant. “I want to see you, and I will. So wait for me.”  
Kazuma blinks, surprised, and then smiles.  
“Okay.”  
It’s not the smile it used to be. Over the last few weeks, he’s felt something different in Kazuma, something he couldn’t quite place. An air of nostalgia, a muted quality to his smiles. Now, hearing him say something like this, it’s obvious that he wasn’t just making it up.  
He takes Kazuma’s hands.  
“Listen… I’m not going to stop being your big brother just because it gets harder. Family stick together no matter what.”  
He doesn’t mention their father. He doubts Kazuma has ever seen him as family, and when it comes to himself, thinking about it at all has always made him uncomfortable.  
Kazuma’s hands squeeze his.  
“… you always do so much for me. I wish I could do something too.”  
“Smile for me. That’s all I ask.”  
A little tearfully, Kazuma smiles. It’s more real than anything he’s given in the last few weeks.  
Kazumi smiles back.  
“See? That’s the best present I could ask for.”  
“H-hey,” Kazuma laughs nervously, looking away.  
“Anyway,” Kazumi says, pulling a book from his jacket, “this finally came out. Want to read it together?”

As years went by, Kazumi had expected Kazuma to grow out of reading out loud with him. Taking turns reading out a story might seem childish to many, although Kazumi selfishly enjoyed it, having had much too few chances to do it as he grew up himself. When he learned to read, people just stopped reading to him altogether. But Kazuma, to his delight, has always been enthusiastic about it. It’s a more quiet kind of happiness, less exciting than playing Vanguard, but precious in its own way. Simple moments spent together, stories shared, their voices picking up where the other left off as they sit next to each other.  
Even now, Kazumi could lose track of time as they read. And he almost does, until Kazuma trails off, accidentally misses a word.  
“Kazuma?”  
Kazuma blinks, and shakes his head.  
“Sorry. ‘They looked at the sword, its pommel encrusted with jewels, and’—”  
A different sentence, two lines further down than where he’d left off. Kazumi frowns.  
“Kazuma. What’s wrong?”  
“It’s nothing…”  
“It’s not nothing. Look at me…”  
He bends a little, over their book, and twists his head up to look at Kazuma’s face. Earlier, when he’d first arrived, Kazuma had seemed a little pale, but it’s always harder to tell on rainy days, in the grey muted light. Now, though, the difference is painfully obvious. Kazuma has always been on the pale side, but now his face is worryingly white.  
“You’re so pale… are you sick?”  
“… I’m hungry,” Kazuma admits, quietly.  
“Oh… what happened? They didn’t forget to feed you again, did they?”  
Not every person who normally took care of Kazuma actually likes him or treats him with what Kazumi would consider proper respect and empathy, but none of them have been harmful or irresponsible; surely none of them would have just skipped one of his meals.  
“No… no, I…”  
Kazuma looks away. Scared, ashamed. Almost like the Kazuma of four years ago. Kazumi’s heart twists.  
“Kazuma… tell me…”  
“I… they feed me, but I still get hungry… it’s been getting worse and worse…” He sighs, hugs himself, and Kazumi could swear he’s shaking underneath.  
His tutor’s words echo in his mind. _He is growing up_.  
“… that’s probably normal,” he says, as softly as he can, reaching for Kazuma’s hand. “I’ve been eating a lot more recently too… puberty does that, they said, you’re just a little earlier than me…” He squeezes Kazuma’s hand, and finds it shaking. “You should tell them… it’s not safe for you to go on like this.”  
Kazuma shakes his head.  
“No.”  
“Why not? Kazuma, you can’t—”  
“I asked for more once,” Kazuma interrupts, quiet but vibrating with restraint, “but they all got scared of me… even those who don’t usually look at me like a monster… it was like suddenly I was someone else… so I stopped”  
And it all adds up. His tutor’s words, the growing coldness of the staff. The muted smiles.  
His growth, his need are scaring them. When his hunger grows, they can’t see him as something cute and harmless anymore. And they never really saw him as some _one_ to begin with.  
And it will only get worse. He knows this viscerally: Kazuma is only _ten_ , just a little boy, and when he grows into a teenager, the blood they’ve been supplying him with will not be enough.  
He can’t bear it. He can’t bear to see his little brother wasting away.  
So he does the only thing that makes sense.  
“Here,’ he says, checking that no voices are heard just outside the door, that there isn’t anyone in the garden, and pulling up his sleeve. “No one will know.”  
Kazuma gasps, and leans away, but he’s dizzy enough that he has to catch himself with his arm to avoid falling.  
“No!” he whispers.  
“Kazuma, you can’t keep going like this… it’s okay, you won’t turn me just from biting me. I did my research.”  
“I _could_ if I wanted,” Kazuma hisses back, pleading. How he knows, Kazumi doesn’t ask.  
Maybe some things are just instinct, to him.  
“You could. But you won’t.” He smiles, tries to sound confident so that Kazuma won’t interpret his fear for him as fear _of_ him. “I trust you.”  
“But… I’ve never…”  
“I know. It’s okay.”  
“I don’t want…” he breathes in, and it almost sounds like a sob. “I don’t want to hurt you.”  
“Kazuma…” He breathes in. “Earlier, you asked me what you could do to thank me, right?”  
Silent, Kazuma nods.  
“Well I want you to be healthy. I don’t want you to waste away. So please… take it.”  
Kazuma looks down. Kazumi holds out his arm, and shifts closer when Kazuma finally takes it, making sure to shield the view from the door with his back.  
“It won’t show if you do it near the elbow,” he whispers. “No one ever sees me without a shirt on.”  
Silent, Kazuma nods.  
He brings Kazumi’s arm up to his face. Kazumi’s breath catches, his skin suddenly buzzing with nervousness. Trepidation, more excitement than fear. He keeps his breathing very quiet, waiting, too scared of causing Kazuma to change his mind to move.  
Kazuma’s lips touch his elbow, and suddenly something primal rises inside him, a kind of fear that has nothing to do with reason and everything to do with instinct, and he still doesn’t move but his heart still hammers against his chest, in his ears, under the skin of his elbow, just beneath the surface.  
Beat  
Beat  
Beat  
Pain. Kazuma’s fangs pierce his skin before he can react, and he gasps, frozen in place, the hammering in his chest almost painful. He’s dizzy, and not even from blood loss: the sight, the knowledge of what’s going on are making his head _spin_.  
And yet, as Kazuma’s eyes slide shut and the tension on his face fades, he doesn’t regret anything.

It only lasts a few minutes. He can’t have taken that much blood, but already some colour seems to have returned to his cheeks. When he pulls out and dabs at the small wounds with his tongue, Kazumi smiles, a little shaky but happy and warm.  
“There,” he says. “See? I’m fine. Are you feeling better?”  
“… yes…”  
He doesn’t meet Kazumi’s eyes, instead looking at the wound with a frown. Carefully, Kazumi pulls his arm back to himself.  
To his surprise, blood is barely beading on the surface, and when he wipes it away with his finger, none comes back out.  
“Huh… it stopped bleeding.”  
“I thought… maybe it would… but I wasn’t sure…”  
Kazumi smiles.  
“Well! Everything’s fine then!”  
He wraps a couple of tissues around it just in case, and pulls his sleeve back down. No point in risking getting discovered.  
Kazuma still won’t look at him.  
“… Kazuma?”  
Slowly, Kazuma looks up. He looks so much better, but his eyes are sad, and scared.  
“Hey…” Kazumi reaches for his hand again, and pulls him a little closer. “It’s okay. I promise. I’m just glad I could help.”  
“… you’re the one who’s pale now.”  
“Am I?” He laughs a little, and oh, yes, it does make him a little dizzy, but, “Well, nothing a good meal and a little sleep won’t fix. It’s fine. Really.” He smiles. “I’m happy to do this. Promise. Okay?”  
Slowly, Kazuma nods.  
“Okay.”

They pick up their book again, for what minutes they have left.  
Hours later, falling asleep after a large and unusually satisfying meal, Kazumi basks in the feeling of actually being _useful_.

It takes him a little while to go see Kazuma again. Not because he doesn’t want to, but because school has started, and figuring out when he could make use of lower security and sympathetic staff to get to him requires some observation and more than a little subtlety. But with some help, he succeeds, and he enters Kazuma’s room to find him pale and almost tearful with relief.  
“It’s okay,” he says, kneeling next to him. “I said I’d help you… I wouldn’t leave you to deal with this alone. Sorry it took me so long.”  
“N-no, I… I’m just happy you decided to come again.”  
“Of course I was going to come.” He looks around. Over the years, their watch has gotten more relaxed, and with his tutor gone, they only have one would-be chaperone left. They should have plenty of time. “Here,” he says, pulling up his sleeve and offering his arm, “you’ll feel better after this.”  
Kazuma hesitates. But the hunger in his eyes is vivid, and when Kazumi softly encourages him, he carefully takes his arm and drinks.  
The jolt of pain and excitement and almost-fear is as sudden and overpowering as last time, and Kazumi thinks that he will probably never be immune to it.  
But maybe he could become used to the feeling itself. It’s not a bad one. Like the beating of his heart when the heroine of a novel gets involved with dangerous but fascinating people, except much stronger, much more _real_.  
And it’s for Kazuma. The one person he’s ever managed to make happy. The one person he truly wants to make happy. His _family_.  
If this has to become his new normal, then he’ll gladly do it.  
“Is it okay?” he asks when Kazuma pulls back. “Was it enough.”  
Kazuma nods.  
A little dabbing at his wound with a tissue, and he brings his sleeve back up. The marks from last time have almost faded, although now there’s fresh ones right next to them. And now that his heart is calming down, that he’s coming down from the strange feeling, he’s feeling the dizziness that hit him last time, but thankfully, he’s seen that some food and rest work perfectly well.  
Perhaps he should start bringing candy, though. Or eating something sweet beforehand. To give it time to hit.  
“Well,” he says, straightening his outfit, “you do look more alive now.” He pauses. “Maybe you should act lethargic for a little while, though… so they don’t get suspicious.”  
“… it’s okay. They don’t take care of me that much anymore.”  
Kazumi tilts his head.  
“How so?”  
“They said I’m not a child anymore and I don’t need that much help…” He looks down, away. “And… you know… since that time…”  
Kazumi’s throat tightens.  
“… I didn’t ask again, and they—well at least she went back to being nice,” Kazuma murmurs, “but… it’s not the same anymore. It’s like… like she always hesitates before smiling. Like she has to do it on purpose.”  
Throat tight and aching, Kazumi reaches to take his hand.  
“Kazuma…”  
“They’re all scared of me. Maybe they’re right. Maybe you should be too.”  
“ _Kazuma._ ”  
He stops, although his breath remains shaky. Kazumi squeezes his hand tighter, and pulls on it slightly so Kazuma will look at him.  
“Listen… you could grow into the most powerful vampire in the world, and you’d still be my little brother.”  
Just as he’s said it, it hits him. It’s the first time he’s really said it out loud. The first time he’s said it to Kazuma. In all those years, the word had remained unsaid, like something hanging between them.  
Kazumi had meant to make their life seem normal, to not call attention to Kazuma’s difference. Now that he’s broken it, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know whether it’s better or worse.  
Before, it was just about Kazuma. His little brother, who happens to need blood to live, and gets sick and burned in the sunlight. Now, he’s not just someone but also something. Part of something bigger. One of many.  
Fiercely, Kazumi hopes that that identity doesn’t take his little brother away from him.  
(But then again, what life is there for him, locked up in this house with people who hate him, who fear him? How selfish is he being, by wanting to keep him with him? Maybe he _would_ be better outside. Kazumi still hasn’t even been able to learn why he’s being kept at home, if their father so despises him.)  
Slowly, unsmiling, Kazuma looks up at him, and nods. When Kazumi smiles and ruffles his hair, he leans into the touch, eyes closing.  
He looks so tired. Even with the fresh blood he just drank.  
Like a deep weariness has been sinking its roots into him.  
So Kazumi tries the one thing that’s always gotten him fired up.  
“So, how about a fight?”  
To his relief, Kazuma does smile that time.  
“Yeah.”

And so the weeks go on. Kazumi’s grades at school are high, and most of his pocket money goes towards snacks. Kazuma never looks completely healthy, but he doesn’t get _worse_ , and that’s something at least. The marks on Kazumi’s arm are never quite healed before a new one comes, but he carries them with pride, hidden under his clothes but a badge of his determination all the same.  
They play. They talk. Kazuma doesn’t hesitate before drinking from him anymore.  
But the brightness of his smile never quite comes back.

Spring turns to summer, and then to autumn. The days get shorter again, and the cold settles, and when Kazuma’s lips press to his arm, their slightly cooler than human contact makes him shiver.  
Kazuma stops, and frowns.  
“Are you okay? You’re warmer than usual.”  
“Huh? Oh, yes, I’m fine. I just got a little winded on my way here.” He smiles, trying to ease Kazuma’s frown. “Go on. You’ll feel better.”  
They fight afterwards, and Kazuma wins, like he does more often than not, and an hour later Kazumi is back in his room, working on his homework as if nothing had happened.

A few hours later, worried that he never asked for his dinner, his maid comes into his room to find him unconscious on his bed, burning with fever.

He wakes up. His dreams since he fell asleep have been strange, and haunted, full of people screaming and a feeling of loss. But he doesn’t even remember when he fell asleep.  
His eyes open, not to the muted colours of his bedroom, but to the white ceiling of a hospital.  
Rusty, sore, he struggles to sit. He’s alone in the tiny room, with no sign of any of his personal belongings, not even his clothes. There’s no cupboard or cabinet in which any of his things could be stored, just a chair and a table and the machines monitoring his condition, the IV plugged to his arm.  
The window, only real source of light with the ceiling lamps turned off, has bars on the other side of the glass.  
He tries to call, but nobody comes. His head still feels so light, like his senses won’t properly anchor themselves within his body, and his thoughts keep flying away, out of reach. He was home, and he was feeling a little tired, and he…  
He doesn’t remember. How long has he been there? Did he miss school? Or would Kazuma worry if he doesn’t come ba—  
His thoughts grind to a halt. Kazuma. A hospital. His clothes _gone_.  
Panic rises. His breath, laboured, picks up, his still rusty thoughts jamming themselves into place. If they undressed him, then clearly they’ve seen…  
A sense of dread rises through him. His elbow is wrapped in a very tight bandage.  
_No… No, no, no, how could I let this happen…_  
He shakes.  
_Calm down. Father might not know. Vampires aren’t common knowledge; even if they saw the marks, they wouldn’t know what it was._  
But the more mundane possibilities would probably lead them to suspect some kind of self-harm, of drugs. And the chances of _that_ not being reported to his father are low.  
_Stay calm… stay calm._  
The door opens. He jumps, and stares at the person coming in, a young woman in a white uniform.  
Her eyes widen as she sees him.  
“Oh! You’re awake… I’ll call the doctor.”  
“Wait!” he tries to call, but she’s already gone, and as he sighs, he hears the distinct noise of a door being locked.

It takes about fifteen minutes for the doctor to arrive, enough for Kazumi to make himself dizzy with pure apprehension.  
“A common flu,” he says when he finally comes in, checking Kazumi’s temperature and taking extra care in observing his eyes with a bright light, “made worse by anemia and dehydration. You’ll recover easily enough, but you were lucky your family cares enough that they brought you in as soon as the symptoms showed. Be sure to thank them.”  
“… I will.”  
His voice is trembling, and he doesn’t even bother to pretend that it’s from illness.  
“Well, you’ll be ready to go home in a few days. We have to make sure that nothing else uses the opportunity to bypass your immune system, among other things. I’ll let you rest now, someone will bring you dinner in about an hour.”  
He nods, numb. He’d been prepared to be questioned about his arm, but no mentions at all is even worse. It means it’s already been discussed, and not with him.  
When he was younger, he’d often thought about disappearing, about how no one would much notice, but for the first time in his life, he truly wants to die.  
_What will they do to him… it’s my fault. All my fault. I should have been more careful._  
He needs to explain… he needs to explain that it’s all his fault, that he did it of his own accord, that Kazuma never did anything to him, but by now it’s probably too late… how long has he _been_ in this hospital, how long has he slept while his little brother might be hurt?  
When his food comes, he can’t make himself eat it, nauseated as he is by the thoughts circling in his head. And besides, what would even be the point? For months, he’d actually pushed himself to eat, to stay healthy, so Kazuma could be healthy too. Now that he’ll probably never see him again, what’s the point of doing it anymore?  
He’s never cared much about it before, but now he just can’t make himself.

The nurse shakes her head when she comes back and takes the tray away. When he finally falls asleep, curled up on his side as best as he can with the IV still in him, the first hints of light are already showing outside.

He expects to see the doctor again the next day. Instead, what he gets is the same nurse again, surprisingly back in the morning and then at noon.  
And then, late in the afternoon, it’s his father who enters the room.  
He doesn’t announce himself. One moment, Kazumi is alone, looking outside the barred window from his bed, and the next, the lock on his door is turning, and his father is there, tall and hard and cold.  
Kazumi can’t say a word. His throat is locked, like a rock is stuck inside, and his stomach is turning even though he’s had no food at all.  
“… I hope,” his father says after over a minute of nauseating silence, “that you have a good explanation for your insolence and foolishness.”  
Kazumi gasps. His eyes _hurt_.  
I”—”  
“I’ve given you the best care, the best education and opportunities for your entire life, have made sacrifices to ensure your safety, and how do you repay me? By going against my orders and behind my back, wasting your study time and endangering yourself so you can play at being rebellious and play with that _creature_.”  
Kazumi’s heart comes back to him, and with it, his voice.  
“Kazuma’s not a ‘creature’!”  
He doesn’t have time to see the blow coming. One second his father is standing at a proper, disdainful distance from the bed, and the next he’s right next to him, the impact of his hand printed in burning, stinging pain on Kazumi’s cheek.  
Something in his throat breaks. Ever since he was born, his father’s voice and influence have kept him under control, shaped his life, his fears, his nightmares and tears, but never until then had he physically hit him. The ease with which he did it sinks in faster, deeper than the pain, and even though his eyes are wet with tears, Kazumi finds he’s lost the will to cry.  
“How long?” his father asks, chillingly calm, his hands perfectly back at his sides as if he hasn’t just hit his son. “How long has he been drinking your blood?”  
He tries to talk. His breath hitches, catches, snagged on a sob that just won’t come.  
“ _How. Long?_ ”  
“… since spring,” his voice says, quietly. “When I went to school.” He tries to hold on to himself, squeezes his eyes shut for a second, drives his nails into his palm so he’ll feel _real_. “I’m the one who told him to! He didn’t do anything to me!”  
His father snorts.  
“A likely story. He must have finally learned to control it… I did well to send him away.”  
Cold washes over Kazumi’s skin like a shiver.  
“Huh?”  
“Listen, you careless, ungrateful boy. His kind can trick your mind and senses to make you do their bidding. How else do you think they find ‘willing’ victims enough to stay alive without breaking their cover? A straight look into their eyes is all it takes. I’ve kept him isolated so no one can teach him how to use it, and trained his handlers to avoid his eyes and in countermeasures, but now he’s had a chance to practice and understand how it works anyway because _you_ were foolish and arrogant enough to wander in there with no care for the consequences!”  
“I—no, he didn’t—”  
“ _Enough._ ”  
Kazumi freezes.  
“You are lucky that I care for you too much to have you punished. What’s done is done. It’s unsafe to keep him at the estate with the situation being what it is now; I’ve made arrangements to have him sent to live with more of his kind. A family I was in contact with has accepted to adopt him, and they are respected enough that his sires will find no reason to take offense with it publicly.” His eyes narrow as he stares Kazumi down, and it feels more controlling than any of Kazuma’s gazes ever have. “ _However_. That means we are now in their debt. Your little fun escapades have cost us some of our standing and bartering power, Kazumi. You have harmed your family. Had you not been lucky, you would have _ruined_ it.”  
“I… I didn’t know, I…”  
His thoughts won’t keep spinning, out of touch, out of control. Kazuma, gone? His panicked mind had prepared for it, and yet hearing it pulls the ground from under him, leaves him breathless. And he should be answering, defending himself, promising _something_ to make his father happy, but he can’t, he can’t, he _can’t_.  
He can’t think. He can’t _feel_.  
“I expect you to _make up for it_ , Kazumi. You will stay under guard until we are perfectly sure that you are free of his control, and then you will come home and act like the son you should have been. I expect absolute obedience, and utmost efforts, and for you to work until you’ve regained the reputation and glory that our family lost by your fault. I want every other family head to talk with envy about what a perfect son I have. _Do you understand?_ ”  
Kazumi swallows. It feels so far away.  
“… I understand.”  
His father nods.  
“Good. I’ll see you again when you don’t look so wretched.” He pushes the cart with his lunch tray towards the bed. “And eat. I won’t have my son looking like a corpse.”

A few weeks later, Kazumi goes home, to a house that looks the same in every way but could not be any more different.  
There is no more help or fond indulgence to be found in the staff. A couple of them still like him, that much is clear, but even they carefully keep their distance, and the rest treat him with scorn, with distrust.  
And why shouldn’t they? He’s the one who got their colleagues, possibly their friends fired. His carelessness put them all in danger. If he was one of them, he’d hate himself too.  
He already does.  
It’s not the same, because people who once saw him as a person now see him as a liability. It’s not the same, because every reason he ever had to try hard, to be strong, to be healthy is gone, all his efforts pointless.  
It’s not the same, because Kazuma is gone. And he can feel, viscerally, from his absence, how much light and warmth his simple presence had brought. How much of a difference he had made, from the world Kazumi knew as a small child.  
But he has to try hard anyway. He doesn’t have a _choice_. It’s the only way he can make it up to all those he harmed, to both his family and those who work for it.  
He goes back to school. He becomes first of his class, and doesn’t stay for clubs after school, and feels the gaze of his classmates grow ever more distant.

“You’re pushing yourself too hard,” the cook says, one day, sliding him an extra serving of his favourite dish. He’s fourteen, now, and his body is starting to stretch in uncomfortable ways, and no matter how much he forces himself to eat, it’s not enough to catch up, to take away the disaproval and scorn in his father’s eyes when he takes in his thin frame. In her, it inspires enough pity that she’s talking to him again. He almost wishes she wouldn’t.  
Who knows what his father could do?  
“It’s fine… thank you for the meal.”  
“You know it’s not your fault, right?” she says before he can exit the kitchen. “Your father would have had to send him away eventually. He can keep a child under control, but he never could have kept an adult in those conditions.”  
“… I still don’t understand. Why did he keep him in the first place? If he could have had him adopted by one of his, then…”  
Her mouth tightens. A look around, and she silently gestures him closer.  
“I’m saying this for your own safety,” she says. “Your father is a fool to keep you in the dark like he does. He should have let you know when you were much younger.”  
Kazumi almost gasps. ‘Fool’? He never thought he’d hear such rash words from anyone in this house.  
“I don’t like the way things are done in this house,” she says with a roll of her eyes as he stares at her in shock. “But I’ve got a sick child of my own. I need the money.”  
“… I understand.”  
As a child, he might not have understood what could drive people to put themselves through things they hate for the sake of someone. Now, he knows, all too intimately.  
“… the man who assaulted your brother’s mother was one of your father’s business partners,” she says quietly, noisily moving the pot she’s working on around.  
He blinks.  
“You know how it is. Image and power are everything. He tried to play with the best, and got too greedy. Those people, they don’t like when people think they’re smarter than them.”  
“… it was punishment?”  
“… a warning. To them, to your father, people like her, people like _us_ , we’re disposable. So it’s a warning. ‘Look at this. Aren’t you glad we didn’t do it to your _other_ son? Wouldn’t it suck if your heir was one of us? If you didn’t have a heir at all?’ That kind of thing.”  
He can’t breathe.  
“So she died…” _instead of me. Because of me._  
“To mess with him. And of course, he can’t just throw the kid away. It’d be an insult, you know.” She snorts. “Everything is about _politics_ with them."  
And then he understands, finally. Why his father kept Kazuma at home, isolated and miserable, instead of letting him grow up with others like him, like he clearly could have done from the start.  
He was a message, and a guarantee. As long as he was there, as long as his father could prove he was healthy, the people who had turned him would be satisfied. They wouldn’t be affronted. And his father wouldn’t have to indebt himself to another vampire family to have them raise a son who might grow up to hate him.  
As long as he was there, isolated, half-starved, never told about what he could actually do, who he could actually be, Kazumi was safe. To live a normal life. To go to school. To eat delicious meals, that he barely touched anyway.  
All this time, while he pat himself on the back for helping Kazuma, Kazuma had been the one helping him. Paying the cost of his safety with his own life.  
How conceited had he been?  
“I… I see.” He tries to breathe. The steam from the pot makes him dizzy. “It’s…”  
He stumbles a little, and sits on a nearby chair.  
He had been so wrong from the start.  
“… then it’s a good thing he’s finally gone… he can have a real family now… he won’t have to… to…”  
Sobs come, unbidden, uncontrolled.  
“… he won’t have to suffer in this place anymore. He’s free.”  
Free of this house. Free of their father.  
Free of Kazumi.  
Did he ever know? He couldn’t have; he would have hated him otherwise.  
The cook looks at him, and there’s pity in her face.  
“Child… from the start, you’ve never had any real control over this. None of it is your fault. Things would have turned out the way they did, sooner or later.”  
“… thank you,” he says, absently, but all he knows is that from the start, he never had any real control over this: he was in over his head, and conceited, and carelessly played with things he didn’t understand, took for granted things that had a great cost.  
And Kazuma paid that price. But what can he even do? If he fails, if he dies, then Kazuma’s childhood was sacrificed for nothing.  
No, if he had tried his best to fill in the role he was meant for, things would have been much better. He has to do it now, to make the most of what he was given. He owes it to him.  
He might never be able to make it up to Kazuma for everything, but he can do this, at least.

Kazumi grows up, and his words become perfect, his manners and posture artfully chiseled, not one breath out of place.

(“I wish I could be like you,” he whispers, at night, holding on to his deck, the last thing he’s kept for himself, the only thing he has _left_ of the little brother he loved and hurt so much. “I wish I could be strong enough to protect everyone.”)

Cardfighting grows in popularity, in reach, the Association burying its roots into the political world, the financial world. It becomes a selling point in social circles, in universities. Kazumi is sixteen, and suddenly, he is _tasked_ with being good, with being a brilliant, succesful figure, with leading this new wave of young heirs. Thankfully, he doesn’t have to struggle too much: Kazuma was stronger, more ruthless than all these would-be masterminds, his instinct for the fight sharper and unadulterated. Kazumi trained in a harsh environment, and the sharks of public life are nothing compared to the gouging icebergs of home, and he cannot be shaken, not with a card in hand.

The Association organises a new event, the scale of which has never seen before.  
Kazumi wishes he could take part. It’s high profile enough that his father would probably have agreed, and it looks so fun and challenging, but the vanguard of the very rich is not a team sport. Who would he even recruit to fight at his side, in this den of wolves?  
So he watches instead. There’s a team that’s marching through all the quests like heroes on a battlefield, brilliant and full of life, their eyes shining with confidence. Nothing stops them, be it fighting or any of the other challenges, and although he can _feel_ the weight gradually growing on their shoulders, they never forget to smile, to fight with everything they have.  
He doesn’t know much about them, other than their names. Who knows what ghosts they may be fighting in their own private life? But watching them, he feels like maybe, just maybe, he could find a portion of that courage too.  
The courage to live. The courage to face Kazuma and apologise, someday. Who knows if he ever wants it—Kazumi doubts it, Kazuma would probably rather forget that he ever existed, but if he _ever_ wants that apology, then he must be ready to give it, without hesitation. And he must be ready to show him that he tried his best, all this time.

TRY3 win every quest with not a single mistake. The Association organises a last ceremony, a final fight, between them and a mystery all-stars team.  
Maybe against his better judgement, Kazumi purchases tickets.  
He’s close to the stage, in the best seats to take in the full scope of the GIRS. Around him, people are laughing, gossiping, waiting Rummy Labyrinth to appear and the fights to start.  
“Do you think they’ll announce the new Branch Chief too?”  
“New? Didn’t they already replace one a few months ago?”  
“Something happened to Suzugamori, apparently. He finished the G quest just fine, and then poof! No trace of him.”  
Try as he might to ignore the gossip, Kazumi’s heart skips a beat. Of all the branch chiefs, Ren Suzugamori was the one he looked up to the most. A man who could have become just like him but instead climbed to the top according to his own rules, and a breathtaking fighter.  
“Isn’t he known for hating responsibility? Maybe he went on holiday and didn’t warn anyone. It’d be his style.”  
“I don’t know, you’d think Shinjou would have gone with him.”  
“They should just make Shinjou the Chief, honestly. He’s the one doing all the work anyway.”  
“Yeah, but he’s not a United Sanctuary clan? He and Narumi are both Dark Zone.”  
“Does it really matter? It’s all about where you live in the end, isn’t it?”  
“Keep it down, I think it’s starting!”  
As the lights go out, a giant puff of smoke covers the stage.  
“Everyone, welcome!”  
“To the special stage!”  
Through the mist, lit from underneath like fairies in a mystical realm, the two idols representing the G quest make their appearance, their shapes casting large shadows over the veil of smoke.  
“The whimsical dreaming butterfly… Am Chouno!”  
“Moonlight is my magic! Luna Yumizuki!”  
“We are…”  
“Rummy Labyrinth!”  
“And today we’re here for a very special fight!”  
“But that’s not all!”  
“To finish the G Quest, we’d like to introduce you…”  
“… to someone who’ll be joining us at the Association from today on!”  
Another light, from under the smoke, but all Kazumi can see is a faint silhouette, its shadow drawing a stern figure against the dense, swirling mist.  
“The night is his realm! The future, his magic! United Sanctuary’s new Branch Chief…”  
“Kazuma Shouji!”  
The spotlights turn on. The music blares. Kazumi can’t _breathe_.  
_It can’t be…_  
He’s stood up without even thinking, without even noticing, despite the complaints of his neighbours. The years have changed him, from a meek, withdrawn child into a young man whose back is straight and firm in his elegant black suit, but Kazumi would know those eyes anywhere, could tell them apart just from the depth of melancholy in them. He’s standing with his head held high, and it’s everything Kazumi would have wanted him to be, except in those five long years, his smile has not returned.  
If anything, his face is ice, and Kazumi wants to disappear.  
_I’m sorry… it was too late… it was all too late. I stole that from you._  
But seeing him again, right in front of him, he somehow can’t make himself think straight. He wants to see him. He wants to cry.  
He wants to hear his voice, even if it’s to hear words of hate.  
Rummy Labyrinth keep talking, and other spotlights are illuminating the scene, but Kazumi can barely hear them. He’s forgotten about TRY3. He’s forgotten about the fight.  
All he can think of is that as Kazuma’s eyes idly scanned the room, they stopped on Kazumi’s standing figure.  
He didn’t say anything.

Days later, Kazumi stands before the tall, pristine tower of the United Sanctuary branch.  
It’s evening, and everyone has gone home, evacuated early from the building as news of the events spread. Kazumi got there late in the afternoon, and he hasn’t moved since.  
The last rays of ember-red sun fade into muted purple when footsteps break him out of his trance.  
He’d been sitting, finally, on one of the nearby benches. Too nervous to stand without pacing, and too tired to move his legs, and yet he couldn’t tear himself away from the building, couldn’t let himself look away from it, for fear it would disappear. But now as he looks up, his body moves on its own, standing and taking a step forward before freezing.  
“Good evening, Big Brother.”  
“Kazuma…”  
Tears burn his eyes, blurring his vision without falling. Kazuma hasn’t grown that much in height, still a head shorter than his own overgrown body, but it feels as though he’s the one looking up at him. Praying. Pleading.  
“Kazuma… Kazuma, are you safe? Something happened at the Dragon Empire branch, someone—”  
“I know. Everything will be all right.”  
“Huh?”  
Kazuma looks at him, and smiles, soft and empty, and Kazumi can’t move at all.  
His eyes are frozen. His body is frozen. He’s helpless, to his own fear and to Kazuma’s hold on him, and it suddenly hits him that Kazuma has always been much more powerful than he thought.  
Did he ever need his help at all?  
“… it wasn’t the plan, but… I’m glad I got to see you again, in the end,” Kazuma says, slowly walking forward. “It will probably be the last time, after all.”  
_What…_  
He tries to speak, but can’t. He has to apologise, at least, to tell Kazuma that he’s sorry he caused him such pain, but the words won’t come out, his throat as frozen as his legs.  
“I couldn’t believe my own senses when I felt you outside… I thought it must have been wishful thinking.” His way of talking is so measured, now, so elegant, so unlike the spontaneity that had been his little brother’s. When did that begin to change? When did Kazuma start hiding his thoughts, his feelings from him? “But I was right… just as I was right last week when I felt you at the main branch.” He takes in Kazumi’s expression and smiles, exhaling a small almost-laugh. “Are you surprised?” His voice is so _deep_ now. “You’re the only human I’ve ever drunk from directly. That feeling is hard to forget. I couldn’t let go of that bond even if I wanted to.”  
He comes even closer, and lays a hand on Kazumi’s arm, his fingers brushing the crook of his elbow through the fabric of his jacket.  
“Thank you, Big Brother. Thank you for coming.” He smiles. “You were worried about me, as always, weren’t you?”  
_Let me help you_ , Kazumi’s heart cries. _Whatever is going on, let me help you! Why is your smile so empty? What’s the point of anything if they couldn’t even make you happy?_  
But his body is like stone, and his voice as silent as space, and his thoughts are starting to freeze, listening but saying very little, even within his own head.  
Kazuma’s face hardens, a smooth mask of cold determination.  
“Don’t worry. This will be my last day here; my role here is done.” He lifts his hand, and brushes his palm over the side of Kazumi’s head, like one of the head pats Kazumi so freely gave him as a child. “A new world is coming, Big Brother. A better world. A world without vampires, and no one to get in your way and hurt you.” And he smiles, again, infinitely soft, and Kazumi is nothing more than a lost child, has never been anything more. “I will free you, Big Brother. This time, you will grow up happy. With no one to hold you back.”  
He turns with a last smile and not another word, and walks into the darkness, his black and blue coat quickly disappearing in the sea of business outfits populating the more busy streets.  
When Kazumi finally breaks out of the spell, Kazuma is long gone.

**Author's Note:**

> In Kazuma's defense, he really didn't do it on purpose when he was a kid


End file.
